Speaking in the broadest terms, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Community (CSIC) may sometimes be perceived as a nation-wide network of diverse and more-or-less interconnected security organizations and entities, each operating on a different level, whether municipal, provincial, federal, and/or international. That’s quite logical, since, no doubt, all these security providers, from the RCMP officers patrolling the tiniest and most remote rural communities in Canada’s hinterland and the intel units created within the police forces of the largest Canadian cities, the special bodies and programs run by provincial police services or departments of justice, to the relevant federal offices, departments (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Dpt. of National Defence, Public Services and Procurement Canada) and spy agencies, have a stake in “Helping Keep Canada and Canadians Safe and Secure.”

Defined more conservatively, however, the CSIC is exclusively a federal-level structure. According to a dedicated brochure released by the Privy Council Office (PCO), at the century’s turn the Community consisted of nine core security and intelligence actors established across four federal portfolios and offices. In pursuing their mission of protecting theraison d’état, these nine actors were functionally complemented by the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), Justice Canada, Transport Canada, and what was then known as Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA).

To fulfil its demanding dual mandate, which includes virtually everything, from basic open-source intelligence collection and analysis to undertaking covert and clandestine activities “with no [explicit] territorial limit,” CSIS has been divided into four branches:

In fact, the newly-erected futuristic Ottawa headquarters, fitted with a high-capacity data centre (over 100 kms of cables) and equaling the size of 11 NHL hockey rinks, speaks for itself being nothing less than a meta-strategic enabler for the decades to come.

Finally, turning to the more traditional, military side of Canada’s defence intelligence, the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) is currently in focus. After a prolonged process of (re-)transformation of the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) command and control (C2) structure that started in 2005/06 under General Rick Hillier, this newly-formed “Level 1 command” (out of seven existing in total) is not simply the present Canadian version of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Working at “the strategic level,” yet, with a significant role in operational support (“mission-focused [and] outcome-oriented”) and a head placed on par with other CAF operational commanders, CFINTCOM makes one comprehensive (and even somewhat sui generis) military intelligence fusion and analysis centre with good prospects of becoming Canada’s cognitive ‘fist’ in an ever changing world plagued by hybrid warfare.

Just as a curiosity, up to 35% of the Command’s personnel, which consists of “about a thousand people” in total, are civilians, mostly analysts. Through such subordinate units as the Directorate of Transnational and Regional Intelligence and the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence, they help assess foreign political, military, scientific and technical information, thus keeping “an around-the-clock intelligence watch on developments abroad…” What this basically means is that, in a time when many security and intelligence recruiters begin to look outwards for providers of diverse non-military perspectives on global affairs, CFINTCOM is on the right track making sure its future work does not get hindered by what General Stephen Bowesdescribes as a culturally-limited view of how our adversaries operate.

Hristijan Ivanovski is a Research Fellow at the University of Manitoba (UofM) Centre for Defence and Security Studies (CDSS), Associate Editor (Europe) of iAffairs Canada, and a former coordination officer with Macedonia’s Secretariat for European Affairs. Since 2016, he has been a Member of East-West Bridge (EWB) contributing to the Foundation’s Foreign Policy Task Force. Hristijan can be reached @ hristijan.ivanovski@umanitoba.ca.

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